Across the ceiling three shallow troughs, appearing as soft as if just pressed into wet beach sand, track where four fingers once scored the surface. They resemble claw marks, like those of a bear.

Long before, this cave had been a den for hibernating bears. I see deep concavities bitten into hard ground. Wallows ground into the floor mark where winter began with the circlings of bears nestling into a hollow, using the weight of their bodies as a grinding tool, curling round and round in the dark. These huge pits are the remnants of their restlessness winding down before the long sleep.

Innumerable vertical slash marks, the length of a hands’ span, fringe the cave at a raised arm’s level. This forest of thin lines creates an abstract pattern that is vigorous, animated — from the Latin animus, soul, possessing life. The deliberate cuts into pale stone cast soft shadows, white on white.

I have no idea what these lines are — or mean. They make a beautiful pattern. Are they language? A counting system? Braille by which to feel ones’ way in and out of the darkness? They are a crowd of I’s, as graceful as figure.


ROUFFIGNAC